Sort Your Fucking Shit Out – The Wildhearts

Ohh it’s getting exciting now. Track two from the 21st Century Love Songs slow reveal. A second peek at what the new album will sound like when it gets here. This one is a wedge shape tune (starts off slender and builds into a ruddy great lump) there’s a bit of a staggered intro riff (with more than a dash of SLF in there tying it to the last singles “Trying to sing like Jake” lyric) opening things up before this new assertive pull you by your bootstraps lyric kicks in and The Geordie from Wonderland starts giving himself a serious talking to.

Over several short verses addressing Ginger by his given name, various scenarios are listed and used a points of reference for how not to go about getting on with folks. From screaming and shouting to swinging punches about, ending up inside and generally getting into shit, the verses become bookended by a chorus that sounds like a fistfight. The music is suitable rough housing too.

Brimming with “Oi’s” and bluntly phrased demands The Wildhearts may just have revived an oft misremembered sub genre of punk and recorded the most rambunctious Oi tune of the last 30 years. The swearing of the title alone would deter many a causal. In context it’s a blunt instrument of myriad uses turned on oneself.

In the Wildhearts tradition of Woah, Shit! You Got Through, Shut Your Fucking Mouth And Use Your Fucking Brain and Some Days Just Fucking Suck (to name but three) we’ve got this albums swearer. It’s easy to dismiss a sweary punk song as less than. Somehow inferior lyrically. I think that’s bollocks, here’s why.

A song yelling at the listener and phrased how people really talk (or at least how some people really talk) is relatable in ways poetic and flowery metamorphic language may not be. It’s like a tool in a mental health first aid kit. A triage procedure to stem the damage.

Just like last time they helped us out with the rough diamond Me(n)tal Health anthem Diagnosis this time the bands self help advice is about inner monologues not always being “It’s OK to not be OK”. Sometimes the right thing to do is call yourself out on your own bullshit.

“Oi, if you can, sort it out and you don’t sort it out, you’re a twat, sort your fucking shit out” Is not mincing it’s words or leaving itself open to interpretation. And just like the classic spoken word recited outro on the bands classic era B-Side The British All American Homeboy Crowd the meaning can be myriad. That track quoted the famous passage

“Perhaps one of the most interesting and colorful words in the English language today is the word “fuck.” It is the one magical word which, just by its sound, can describe pain, pleasure, love and hate. In language, “fuck” falls into many grammatical categories.”

I like a good swear. In the right place of course. Never in anger if it can be avoided (it loses you the high ground before you’ve started) or unnecessarily in front of a school teacher (BrotherForTheDeaf married one, she’s often appalled even when it is deemed necessary) l rate a well placed F-Bomb as a fine art. A dextrously deployed C-Word can bring the house down and win you the prize if used creatively.

That’s how I see this song. Dexterous, powerful, conversation stopping and victorious. Oi! That final scream is belter.

I had heard tell of a different track from this album premiering this week. Directions was trailed (albeit very briefly) online in a ‘Listen to Kerrang! Radio to hear the new Wildhearts tune this week’. I wouldn’t know where to find Kerrang! Radio so I haven’t yet heard Directions. I’m happy to let this one percolate for a few days before I go a hunting.

It’s not difficult to see why they didn’t trail this one on the airwaves though. The bleeps would make it sound like techno-metal… actually might be good that. A radio edit might be the way to go. Intro riff, Oi and that final primal Arrrrgggghhh!

September’s coming soon…